"He came and told me that he had found a better job than working
in space," Sergei Krikalev, the training center's chief and the
current record holder for most time in space by any human, told
the Interfax news service. "Frankly, we were counting on him
because he was not just in the unit, [but] he was assigned to a
crew." [ Quiz:
Do You Know the International Space Station? ]

Lonchakov was scheduled to fly as the commander of the Russian
spacecraft Soyuz TMA-16M, launching in March 2015 with Roscosmos
cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko and NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, the
space station's first two
yearlong crew members.

Once on board the orbiting laboratory, Lonchakov was set to join
the Expedition 43 crew as a flight engineer before taking over
command of the space station as the leader of Expedition 44 in
May 2015. He was then to return to Earth in October 2015.

Lonchakov's replacement on the crew was not announced. Backing
him up on the Soyuz TMA-16M crew was Alexei Ovchinin, a fellow
Roscosmos cosmonaut.

Lonchakov, 48, joined the cosmonaut corps in 1997 and flew three
spaceflights to the International Space Station. He first
launched on NASA's space shuttle Endeavour as a member of the
STS-100 crew in 2001, helping to deliver the Canadarm2 robotic
arm during the 12-day mission.

The next year, he flew on board the first Soyuz TMA-class
spacecraft, Soyuz TMA-1, for a 10-day flight to the space
station.

Lonchakov's third — and now final — spaceflight began in October
2008 with the launch of Soyuz TMA-13, the 100th crewed
Soyuz spacecraft to fly. Serving as an Expedition 18
flight engineer, Lonchakov spent 178 days in space, bringing his
career total to 200 days (and 19 hours) off the planet.

During his last stay on board the International
Space Station, Lonchakov also performed two spacewalks to
retrieve and install science experiments mounted on the outside
of the complex, for a total extravehicular activity (EVA) time of
10 hours and 27 minutes.

Krikalev said the reasons for Lonchakov's departure were not
clear. The new job that lured Lonchakov away from the cosmonaut
corps was not disclosed.

Lonchakov is not the first career space explorer to resign for a
new career, even after being assigned to a mission. NASA
astronaut Joan Higginbotham left the U.S. space agency in
November 2007 to become a vice president of an oil company. Her
departure came the month after she was named to the crew of
STS-126, which would have been her second space shuttle mission.

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